Not a retirement, but a transition for local pastor

Tuesday

Sep 10, 2013 at 12:01 AMSep 10, 2013 at 8:55 PM

Greg Floyd had a motto for both of his jobs – he put out fires in one and started fires in the other. Floyd is a Kings Mountain pastor and for 30 years now has been a fire marshal in neighboring Gaston County. Last week, nearing the end of his 30-year career, he retired from the fire department.

Lauren Baheri

Greg Floyd had a motto for both of his jobs – he put out fires in one and started fires in the other. Floyd is a Kings Mountain pastor and for 30 years now has been a fire marshal in neighboring Gaston County. Last week, nearing the end of his 30-year career, he retired from the fire department.

On Saturday, his wife, Joyce Floyd, threw him a surprise retirement party where he was awarded the key to the city of Gastonia. “I want to thank my family for their support,” Floyd said. “They were the ones that had to go through what I went through in my career, every step of the way.”

That career began in 1984. Floyd was approached by a friend asking if he’d ever considered a career on the fire department. “When I was a little boy I had dreamed of being a firefighter,” Floyd said.

So, he applied. After passing the physical and written test, he got the job. The first day on the job, however, wasn’t as easy as he thought. The first day working as a firefighter, Floyd worked a mill fire from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. “It was a lot of work,” Floyd said. “Crawling through the smoke, it was all smoky. And I was the rookie so I had the sledge hammer doing the hard work, busting out the brick walls.”

When Floyd finally made it back to the station, he was dehydrated, wiped out and discouraged. But again, a friend helped lift his spirits. “He told me, ‘All of them are not going to be like this,’” he said.

And sure enough, they weren’t and Floyd became enthralled in his job. In that same year that he started on the Gastonia fire department, he took his first job as a pastor. Trying to juggle both jobs was trying at times. So when an 8 to 5 job in fire prevention came out, Floyd jumped at it. That way, he could tend to his pastoral duties on Sundays and still work on the Fire Department.

“It was really a blessing,” he said. Eventually, Floyd became an assistant fire marshal and 12 years later a fire marshal. In his time as fire marshal, he’s learned a number of things.

“If you treat people like you want to be treated, you’ll get the respect you deserve,” he said. “You don’t have to flash your badge to get respect.”

Now, he’s enjoying the life of retirement – kind of. “I’m not retiring, I’m transitioning,” he said. Floyd sees the extra hours as a chance to do more in his role as pastor at Vestibule AME Zion Church in Kings Mountain. He is starting work on a local school mentoring program and hopes to devote more time to his congregation.

In his time on the Fire Department, he did some mentoring of his own. Floyd worked on the minority recruitment and hiring task force. As an African-American, Floyd wanted to show from personal experience how a minority could be successful in a predominantly white male dominated workforce. He hopes his final message is just that. If you’re a young person, hoping to make a better life for yourself, fire fighting is a great career to do it, he said.

“It’s a great career and a great way to give back to your community,” he said.